Los Angeles, California archives

   
5.17.2004 // Volume 1 - Los Angeles, California
Posted at 6:13 PM

       
       
    
 
Hello friends, it's your old chum Jeremy Ebersole, writing to warn you to watch your inboxes for the next few months. They're about to get rocked harder than they have ever been rocked before. In fact, I believe it may be detrimental to your health to read some of what I send you, because it will be so insanely jam packed with total and complete awesomeness you may just fall over dead in your chair. Yeah, right there. Right where you're sitting right now. Be ready. It's coming...

So here's what's happening...I am traveling to California via Chicago and Route 66. I am leaving a week from today. It's taking me a week to get there. I am making a documentary of my travels. My good friend Dan is coming with me. I thought I'd invite you along too...metaphorically that is. You can't actually come. There's no room for you. But you are invited into the exciting and nonsensical psyche of my mind. How? Through the power of the Internet (more later). Back to my plans...once we get to California, we are homeless for about 4 days. We will network amongst the bums and homeless hobos of downtown LA, come out alive with a newfound respect for our riches, and move into our apartment on June 5. We're subletting an apartment in Westwood for 2 months. Westwood is the area surrounding UCLA. It is by Hollywood and lots of big movie premiers and people even more beautiful than myself. I will be like trash to them, but that's cool because trashy is the new chic. Zoolander is real. What will we do in LA? We will see things. Baseball stadiums, beaches, movie premiers, famous people, big buildings, sidewalks, palm trees, sunbathers, bikinis, amusement parks, glass churches, love, beauty, power, we'll see it all. Most importantly, we will have fun. If you're not having fun, don't do it. Like right now, if this is boring you out of you mind, stop reading. Really I won't be hurt...loser. Anyway, I'll be leaving for two weeks in June to return to school, but then I'll be back until August 5. Then we travel more. Up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco, Oakland, and the Napa Valley for a bit, then up to Seattle for a bit, then home to Ohio via the great white north and Minneapolis. I'll be home for a day or two before returning to PA for the fall semester. Oh, and we'll make money somehow, somewhere along the way.

So why am I going? The best explanation I can give is that I can't not go. It's like every moment of my life until now has been building up to this. All my time at Copley, at Etown, in Nashville, in Australia, and everywhere else I've been. It's all convinced me I was born on the wrong coast of this country, and now I'm about to find out. This is Jack Kerouac for the 21st century. Two bright-eyed college kids following their dreams into the sunset to the lands where dreams are made. There's no way to put into words what this trip means to me. It is the defining moment of my life. Everyone dreams of the California summer, but no one makes it happen. I'm making it happen. On a more professional note, I want to enter the entertainment industry when I graduate. The biz is based in LA, so in preparation for a possible permanent move, I am taking this time to examine the myth to see if it's all it's cracked up to be.

So why do you care? Well I can't answer that question. Perhaps it's my natural charm or my stunning good looks? For real though, here's how it's goin down. I'm keeping a journal on the Internet. You may call it a "blog," I hate the word blog, it makes me sound like I'm sitting in front of a computer screen all day not actually doing anything other than thinking of what to write next. I can assure you I will be doing a lot of doing and much less writing. I can also assure you that my entries will be remarkably wordy and unnecessarily long. However, they will also be real and hopefully funny and definitely much better than anything you'd see on TV (kind of like this one right now). The stuff will be up on http://ebersolej.easyjournal.com. Feel free to go there now and examine and read some of my journal from Australia if you haven't already. Also, leave comments! I love reading them. Many of you friends know exactly what this is about because you were a part of this list when I was in Australia. Same deal; I'll update every few weeks, leaving you in dreadful anticipation for what seems like an eternity. For some of you this is new. If you have no idea why you're receiving this, fear not. I am not stalking you (you should know I am very anti-stalker from my latest movie production), I simply know how to use the college directory and thought you might be interested in my summer foibles. Feel free to read or not read, I'm just here to give you that little burst of thrill and excitement every now and again to get you through the dog days of summer (kind of like that Nintendo Power/Tiger Beat magazine you used to get in the mail every month, except you don't even have to go to your mailbox to get me, and I come more often). So I say in honor of the late great Fred Rogers, "Won't you be my neighbor?"

So that's it. Check the website and be ready for the maximum amount of awesomeness allowed by law. Be glad you live in the U.S. (or Australia)...in some countries this much fun is illegal. Keep it real.

Jeremy


P.S. -- If you should want to get ahold of me, which I highly encourage by the way, you can do so this way.

This week I'm at home in Ohio. Call me at (330) 666-8810.

From Monday May 24-Monday May 31 I will be on the road. Call my cell phone at (330) 903-0589. A fun game you can play would be to call me at some random time and see where I am. Illinois? Kansas? New Mexico? Stranded in the desert? Who knows. I'll also have my cell phone on pretty much all summer. Don't leave a message though. I can't check them.

I will be unreachable amongst the vagrants for a few days then on June 5 I move into
10984 Strathmore Dr.
Los Angeles, CA 90024
My phone number at the apartment will be (310) 443-7783, but I can't imagine I'll be in my room much. Though it would be fun for me to say, "Hey, I'm at my apartment right outside of Hollywood looking at palm trees right now." And you'd be like, "Dude that's totally sweet, I'm going to come visit your sweet pad." And I'd be like, "Yeah man, I'm bout it bout it."

From June 12-June 23 I'll be in Etown. Perhaps I'll see you. Also, I'll periodically be on AIM at DrummerJE. Then there's always this email address and leaving messages on the website. Any and all of these forms of communication are encouraged. I'm a communications major, come on, help me out. Hope to hear from you. You rock! Totally like yeah!   
   

 
   
6.8.2004 // Volume 2 - Los Angeles, California
Posted at 4:35 PM

       
       
    
 
Holla mis amigos. (I have to talk in Spanish cause that’s what they speak here. It’s like I’m in another country. Did you know that not a single American owns a hotel in the United States?) Okay, that was the first of many tangents I will inevitably tally forth on. But anyway, I must dive in without too much dilly-dallying because this is gonna be a whopper. Even bigger than the Burger King sandwich! Really, this may actually be my first two-parter. Prepare your minds for the absolute maximum amount of entertaining reading you have ever attempted to handle. You that it was rad before? That was just a little bit of sleet. It’s about to hail, baby.

So like, I’m out in like California, cha ya know? It’s totally bad man…like good. Cowabunga to the max. Turbo-charged even. Short version for you lazy bums…I’m in LA right now typing on the computer in my massive pad at UCLA after spending a week in the mountains and the previous week driving across the country. Now for the true believers…you get the juice…and this is fresh off the tree. Flash back to a little over two weeks ago. I had been home in Ohio for a week to hang out with family and friends for a bit before we left. Yes we. Independent minds work best when they have a partner. (Wrap that around your brain.) This is too much for me to handle alone. So a friend came along. He’s a good guy. We have good times. After sleeping in for a week, it was fairly tough getting over to my broski’s house by 9:30 in the a.m. but I made it, his parents loaded us up with all the stuff I told myself I wouldn’t forget and we were off. We had no idea what we were getting into. No matter how much you prepare yourself, there really is no way you can truly be prepared for a week-long cross-country trip. It’s just so long. Really, it’s long. The country is really big. So we were off.

Now we (I) was dead set on traveling Route 66 out to LA. It just seemed like the only authentic way to do it. (History lesson: Route 66 was the first highway connecting the Midwest to the west coast spanning from Chicago to LA. It served as an escape route during the Depression, a war road during WWII, and then fell by the wayside and was decommissioned when the Interstates came around. Now it is a fabled magical and very hard to find jumble of unmarked roads with a really cool vibe about them.) It turned out great if not especially fast. I realize more and more that I really like history. I swear it’s more fun than it was in high school. So, we had to start from the beginning in Chicago. It may be a Route 66 sin, but we took the turnpike to Chicago. The Ohio and Indiana toll roads. Toll roads are stupid. I say we oughta take some of that massive defense budget and put it toward better roads s we don’t have to pay just to drive. Paying for gas is bad enough. (It’s about $2.40 out here, $2.75 in the dessert!) It was long and boring. Some of the highlights included finding the only turnpike rest stop not to have fast food the only time we really wanted fast food. I question the feasibility of a sit-down restaurant for travelers on a hurry anywhere. My good conversations were had in the car and the time flew by rather quickly.

We got to Chicago and stayed in a suburb called Oak Park with one of my pal’s friends. It was swell. She had super-hairy dogs whose hair covered their eyes, and I felt sorry for them cause I can’t imagine how they could see anything through that massive hair. It was like my hair when it was along except their hair was gray, and I don’t plan on turning gray for at least a few more years. Now I didn’t bring along much heavy clothing on this trip. California summer = bikinis and swim trunks, not winter jackets. Chicago in all its wintry glory decided to be freezing cold though. So we took the subway into the city and walked around in the blizzard looking for the best restaurant ever. Ever. It’s called Joey Buona’s. I have only ever had one dish. They are nachos. But they are unlike anything you have ever had before. It s the closest to heaven you can get this side of eternity. I had them the last time I was in Chicago and had to go back because they are what really launched the idea for the trip (long story). These nachos are unbelievable. Indescribable (I may use that word a lot in this letter). It’s worth the trip to Chicago just to try them. So we ate there and headed back through the concrete jungle back to the suburb. Now suburbs of major cities are much different than regular suburbs (i.e this Chicago suburb was probably bigger in itself than anywhere I’ve ever lived). Anywhere you have to pay to park to go anywhere is a city in my book. Suburbs are Wal-Marts and urban sprawl with parking lots and housing developments replacing the grass.

And it was good. So we left and started our trek west. It was quite a week getting up and traveling from about 10 till 9 every day, but it was an adventure, and I saw more than ever in a single week. The coolest thing about Tuesday was this old restored gas station we ran into in Illinois. Old gas stations may not be near as cool a Gap’s new summer line or that chick who won the new American Idol, but they are pretty neat. They’re real tiny and old-looking. And hey, retro-chic is total now. It’s so yes. Va-voom! It was really cool. We also got to see a lot of the original road beside us as we drove. (Route 66 was rerouted and paved over many times in its multi-decade existence, so often the road we’re driving on is not the actual original road, but a newer alignment. In fact the original road was not paved and didn’t get paved till the ‘30s. We later got to drive on some original paved and unpaved road.) That night we made it to the grand gateway city of St. Louis to visit a good friend of mine. It was raining and hailing and we were scared, but the boogey man stayed away and we had a jolly time.

The next morning we got up and took a little tour of the city. We saw Busch Stadium where the Cardinals play (in its final season) and the Arch which was much more spectacular than you would think from the pictures. The thing is huge and awesome. The rest of Missouri almost knocked us out with its blandness however. Sorry, it’s just pretty boring to be honest. Maybe it’s just not to different to what I’m used to so it seemed uninteresting. We did some good old fashioned soul searching though, and saw real America. What does that mean? Well I can’t describe it, but it was real. Really real. We stopped in Springfield that night. Interesting place. We decided that to make the most of our experience we had to at least once stay at the cheapest hotel we could find. Well we found it. Owned by Springfield’s very own real-life Apu, this dump cost us $28 total for the night. Cheaper than a hostel. Once we replaced the light bulb in the bathroom and killed the bugs, we got our sleeping bags out and did our thing. And our thing was sleeping. Driving is a tough job. We didn’t make any trouble like Apu thought we would since we were under age (Springfield must have a rowdy bunch of kids), but we did run into some logistical problems with the documentary I was making. It is really tough to make a documentary. It’s not like with a regular screenplay where you know what you’re doing. You just have to do everything by the seat of your pants and hope you capture something moving on tape. You can’t create moments, you just have to hope you find them. It was tough, but it helped me reach a deep though.

Deep thought: I’ve been obsessed with beauty lately, not in a Hugh Hefner sort of way (I saw his grave today even though he’s not dead; it’s right beside Marilyn Monroe’s) but in the sense of trying to discover what it is. Now follow me on this. The task of humankind in my eyes is to the see the beauty in a Kansas cornfield. I take a lot from American Beauty, don’t get me wrong, but this is great stuff. Now anyone can be driving along the ocean or somewhere typically “beautiful” and think that is a beautiful place. It is. But what makes it beautiful? What makes the ocean beautiful are not the things that make it up. Beauty is not a sum of its parts. It is not the combination of the crashing waves, the glistening sunset, the majestic rocks. These things have beauty in them, but they are not beauty. The beauty is in the fact that this place exists. The ocean is beautiful because it exists. This is the key. Existence is transferable; it is universal. Transfer this to the cornfield of Kansas. This is not typically thought of as beautiful. But it is. The dry corn stalks and endless nothingness do not make it ugly. Their existence, the same existence that underlies the ocean, makes it beautiful. It is beautiful because it is. So what is not beautiful? Nothing! This is our task – to see the beauty in all of creation. It’s all the same stuff molded differently. It’s all universal. You’re beautiful.

In light of that, we traveled the beautiful Route 66 through the rest of Missouri saying “Yo what up?” to the ghosts of the millions who had traveled the road before us. It was cool. An indescribable feeling to be in the place that had meant so much to so many instead of a faceless Interstate. Now you all hopefully read “The Grapes of Wrath” sometime along your schooling. My favorite chapter in that book was the little one about the turtle crossing the road. It had nothing to do with the main story line, but it was brilliant and very moving. This turtle crosses the busy road slowly and methodically and he makes it. We had a moment there on the road as we were driving and almost ran over a turtle in the middle of the road. But we didn’t hit it. It was just like the book. We passed through a number of small towns, the smallest I can remember being Avilla with a population of 137. That’s it. No more. We crossed into the land of dust and red sand of Oklahoma. It was a great state, way underrated. The first place we stopped was a tiny restaurant called Dairy King in the tiny town of Commerce. The place was built in 1927 as the very first Marathon gas station and a model for all others. The entire building was smaller than a dorm room I swear. The place has some amazing history. It was probably my favorite stop the whole way. The owner told us all about it. Micky Mantle grew up in Commerce just down the road and used to get gas there all the time (he was discovered just over in Kansas because a scout driving Route 66 happened to see him slugging balls 500+ feet into the river during a little game on this dirt field). Whitey Ford and Yogi Bera were also frequent customers. The owner even graduated with Micky’s brother. The we left and crossed this old bridge built in 1921 and found ourselves in Oklahoma City for the night where we shelled out $60 for a Super 8. I don’t know how you could want more. Super 8 is the pinnacle of hotel accommodation. They had it all…except free shampoo.

To be continued…

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…right now! I have conveniently broken up the reading into sections so as not to hurt your pretty little head by staring at a screen for to long. So now it’s Friday. This was a day of much roadkill. Not by myself mind you, it was already dead, I swear. It was amazing though. We saw an armadillo! Yeah, a real armadillo shell and all. Coolest animal alive (or dead). We also saw a number of healthy animals on or near the road including a roadrunner, snakes, deer, buffalo, tons of jackrabbits who like to run in front of the car just as you’re approaching them, and of course the obligatory cattle including the longhorned variety. We have reached Texas at this point. I can’t tell you what it’s like actually being in Texas. We hear so much about it in the news, but actually being in Texas, wow. And don’t worry, I didn’t mess with it; it was far too big. And big it was. They call it big sky country our there, and unless you’ve seen it, it’s really tough to pinpoint. In Ohio or Pennsylvania or even the parts of Australia I was in, there was always something whether trees or hills or mountains or buildings. Here there was nothing. Absolutely nothing except ground and sky. A few trees, but you could probably count them on your hands in any given mile. No hills…just sky as far as the eye can see. Big blue sky without a cloud in sight. It was incredible. We liked it so much we decided to get out into it. We found an old original dirt road alignment and decided it would be fun to try it out. If I only had 4-wheel drive, we would have made it all the way. My poor minivan went through more on this trip than she was ever designed to handle. We went pretty far on this dirt and gravel road before encountering rocks and hills that we simply couldn’t risk; it was painful, but we had to turn back. There was something cool about being on that original road that probably is used like once a week these days. I couldn’t even see behind me because of all the dirt we were kicking up. We went through Amarillo and hit the famous Cadillac ranch. You know it, the place with the old Caddies buried face down in the ground. It was a sight to behold indeed. You can barely see them from the road, and they’re tough to get to, but the reward it worth it. It is simply 10 old cars sticking out of the ground all in a line. They have become a public work of art. They have spray paint cans at the entrance you can use to add your mark to the art. Vandalism has never been so much fun. It was a blast.

At the western border of Texas was our first real ghost town. A ghost town of course is just a dead town with nothing here anymore. In this case, Glenrio used to be a thriving community and stop for Route 66 travelers; when the road was bypassed however, the town had nothing to keep it alive. Eventually everyone left and the town just sat there gathering dust. Funny thing is there are still signs pointing to it. This place was dead as a doornail though. There were wild dogs running around all over the place, crumbling buildings, ramshackled neon signs, you name it. It was weird, an entire town totally deserted. We made it through okay and entered New Mexico, and after following a dead end for a while, we ended up in Tucamcari for the night where we stayed at an incredible old hotel called the Blue Swallow. It was cheap and amazing. He place has been a Route 66 landmark for a while, and one interesting note is that apparently old motels used to have garages. The place had a little garage next to every room, and we could park right there. No lugging luggage up flights of stairs. It was super.

Saturday we made our way to Santa Fe which is a very peculiar town. They must have some sort of building code that says every building must have the exact same brown adobe feel. It was like housing development conformity gone Native American. It was weird, and the place was packed. After driving for hours and seeing absolutely nothing, we were thrust into this jam-packed mecca. It was a very strange place, and frankly I was a little scared. But Albuquerque made up for it. Now I had been to Alby before, and loved it. This just confirmed my inclination that Alby is clearly the coolest city in the country. I can’t really tell you why, but everything is perfect about it. It’s fun, quirky, artsy, classy, relaxed, has great architecture, I just love it to death. Then while were filming me trying to cross a cattle guard (to stop cows from going on the road), my window broke. I have power windows see, and it was so windy out there something must have been knocked loose, because all of a sudden the window stopped working. That’s technology for you.

Sunday found us in sunny Arizona. It was cool, real cool. We shelled out the bucks to enter National Park land and see the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. The landscape was unreal. It didn’t feel like we were on Earth anymore, it was so warped. All these rock trees and craters and sand. It was nuts. Now Arizona is the king of pricey tourist stops. We tried to see the Meteor Crater (big 2 mile hole) but it cost $12 just to look at it. Wack man, not cool at all. But we discovered our own little haven. There is a tiny town called Two Guns. This was the adventurous part of our journey. The area used to be inhabited by Native Americans and was turned into a campy old west themed tourist stop in the ‘50s. Today it is nothing but rubble. It was absolutely incredible. Glenrio was like New York compared to this place. It was incredible to think that at one time there used to be tons of people here, cause now it is just ruins. We explored all over this mountainous desert village. There was an old roadside zoo that was really cool, but it was all ruins now. We even took a flashlight down into the Apache Death Cave where…well it’s a pretty gruesome people. This place was really unbelievable though. What a day this was, because next per a friend’s advice, we took a side trip to Sedona. Wow. There are no words. Some people retire to Florida, but they are missing out. This may be the most beautiful place on Earth. We took this windy mountain road through the forest we didn’t even know existed after coming through the desert to this quaint mountain town. I really can’t do it justice. I’ve been a lot of places, and I can say this hidden gem is hands down the most inspiring place I’ve ever seen. Go there now. This delay allowed us to drive into the blinding sun much of the way to the town of Williams. What a place. This really was a great day. We ate at a cool ‘50s themed restaurant and stayed the night at a great little bed & breakfast. The town was neat. They had a fair going on and we landed there, unbeknownst to us, smack dab in the middle of their wild west festival complete with a shootout. The town had so much character and was so hoppin, it was a nice change from a lot of what we had seen (which was still exciting in all its glorious nothingness).

Arizona does not observe daylight savings time. They are the only state to do so. This will be helpful for you if you decide to go so you do not wake up at 5:45 accidentally. So all I have to say about Monday is that I have seen hell…and it is just across the border. There is no place on Earth quite like the desert. Indescribable heat. Unbearable sweltering heat. Like nothing you have ever experienced. People warned us to cross at night. Nothing could have prepared us for this scab of geography. Upon leaving Williams, we found ourselves on this insane twisty road up the mountains in the middle of nowhere like we had never been before. I questioned whether we would make it. Then we came to Oatman, the most ridiculous western tourist town ever. Why anyone would ever voluntarily go here I cannot fathom. There were wild donkeys that you could pet and that is cool, but the billions of flies that accompanied them made up for that. After traveling and seeing nothing this place just appeared and suddenly there were tons of cars, and then it was gone again. And finally we found the glorious Colorado River. We were saved, or so we thought. All the images of California forget to leave out the fact that half of it is covered with the Mojave Desert. The Mojave deserves more credit than it gets. It is hell. The car got up to about 120 degrees and averaged about 105. We had no air conditioning but putting the windows down was worse since this allowed the 105 degree air to hit you full force. The wind burned us it was so hot. There was no escaping the heat. We left Route 66 and took the highway through the desert. We needed to get the heck out of there. And we did. We crossed the mountains and saw the vast smog-covered destination we had traveled eight days to see…Los Angeles.

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And we had arrived. We drove through the sprawl to our temporary home. I didn’t know much about the place called Nature Friends on the town of Sierra Madre coming in, but what I found was a godsend. Sierra Madre is a really cool little (by LA standards) town on the side of the mountains just east of LA. These are woodsy mountains, not like the Rockies. The town was spectacular. The houses had to be worth millions, built on the side of the mountain on very narrow streets. The town was like a resort escape. It was so relaxing…very European feeling…though I’ve never been to Europe. The place was found by a great former professor who helped us out more than we could ever have asked for (Etown picks em well). Nature Friends itself is these two Alpine style lodges created by this international organization to give people a place to escape into nature. We stayed here in this incredible beautiful setting in a fully-furnished lodge for the week for an unbelievable price. I have never lived so well. We finished off Route 66 the next day which dead ends unto the Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica, explored down there a little, and did some shopping. Now this is my first experience with providing my own food. We’d eaten out while traveling, but I knew my budget couldn’t handle that, so we had to go shopping. It was hard. I want my mommy. There is so much good food, but it’s all so expensive, and I wanted it all, but it takes too much time and skill to make. I sound like a little kid, I know. I must say I will enjoy school food much more. They actually know what they’re doing. I just saw stuff and grabbed it. Easy Mac and fish sticks for dinner, sounds good to me. I even bought some store brand Spam, which turned out to be pretty good. Wednesday I got my car window fixed by the nicest mechanics I have ever met. Then I got lost in Pasadena. I walked for over five hours without stopping. I thought I would die. It was close. If I had a bad heart it would have given up. Blisters, sore legs, horrible sun burn, I got it all. The burn is still healing a week later. But it was an experience, not one I would ever repeat, but it’s one for the record books.

We eventually left for our permanent place. This section may get a little random and haphazard cause it has just been so much to take in at once. Los Angeles is a very unique place. If New York is vertical, LA is horizontal. The city has to be bigger than like the entire state of Ohio. Downtown itself is probably no bigger than Cleveland, and there aren’t many skyscrapers, but the sprawl is never ending. Miles mean nothing here, because there is so much traffic. The six lane highways either fly at 80 mph or crawl at about 5. It takes forever to get anywhere because the entire city drives. And they all drive beautifully restored old cars, expensive German luxury cars, or humongous pointless SUVs. There is no rust to be seen. There are no subways, no trains, just massive highways with carpool lanes and stoplights so only one car enters the highway at a time. But there are lots of palm trees to make up for it. I love palm trees. The culture is very interesting as well. People are generally pretty laid back and friendly, but another side of it is very manufactured and image-obsessed. The papers are full of stuff you would never see anywhere else. One paper had a section of ads that were basically a rich man’s dating service. It said if you were a rich an powerful man, you could pay to join this service where you would be matched with young beautiful women who could join for free. “Hi, if you’ve spent your entire life accumulating possessions without giving a crap about other people and finally realized you’re a lonely bum, we have a nice selection of manipulative trophy wives with low self-esteem for your pleasure.” That said there is an interesting phenomenon here. I cannot explain it despite every attempt. Every person in the entire city is physically absolutely gorgeous. I have never seen anything like it. Everyone is just plain hot. I don’t know if it’s the image-obsessed culture that drives people to look good above all else, maybe lots of beautiful people just move here, maybe they al have plastic surgery, maybe I just think they’re beautiful because of the image I have in my mind of LA. I can only assume when I return to the Midwest I too will radiate hotness more so than I do now. Watch out ladies…no really, I’m at least 20% hotter than when I left. I really don’t know how, but these beauties are everywhere, fast-food restaurants, temp agencies, gas stations, everyone is drop-dead gorgeous. Especially at UCLA.

We found our apartment on the Internet and we have would up smack dab in the middle of Westwood, a section of LA famous for star-studded movie premieres and the home of UCLA. School is still in session here (they have quarters) so it’s kind of like being back in college, except everything is bigger than Etown. The town itself is really cool; there’s a lot going on and the downtown section has these great old movie theatres that have premieres all the time. We are right in the middle of the film industry. We are living in an apartment surrounded by college students. We have two roommates who are really cool guys as well. The apartment is huge and incredible. They have another unexplainable phenomenon here called In-N-Out Burger. It is a fast food restaurant, but it is nothing like other places. It is only on the West Coast and has somehow managed to create this ultra-cool image for itself. The first thing our roommates said was that we had to go to In-N-Out. Who says, “Oh man, have you been to the local McDonald’s? It’s the coolest place in town!” But here that’s how it is with In-N-Out. They have their own merchandise line, and are considered one of the coolest places to work for the summer. All they have on their menu are hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and fries, and shakes…that’s it. Nothing else. Maybe that’s why they are so different, but their popularity is without compare. There’s also a place with supposedly the best pizza in the country. We had a free sample, and it was pretty good, but Pizza Hut, now there’s some good pizza. We also started getting the perks of LA right away by being invited off the street to see a free movie screening as a test audience for a new movie coming out. Free movie and all we have to do is give our opinion! And movies here cost $10. God bless LA.

So I’ve been pretty busy lately. Even when we think we’re bored our pet fish and this crazy snake that’s always trying to get out of his cage are here to entertain us. This crazy world of LA with it’s 10,000 different communities each with something different to offer will undoubtedly give me more than I could ever see in two months, but I’ll do my best. I’m still too new to have a strong opinion one way or another, but I have been having the time of my life. As soon as a find a job I’ll have money to do even more. I miss you all though, and no matter how hot the people are here, you’re still way hotter…unless you’re a guy, then you’re just a stud big boy. I have no idea what I’ll be doing in the next few weeks (except next week when I’ll be back in Etown) but hey, I’m gonna be livin. So maybe this update was more informative than funny like my old Aussie ones, but I have just done so much I didn’t want to leave any out or bore you (as you doze off…don’t give up yet we’re almost there!) And so I end with this…I have found that playing Modest Mouse a hundred times a day on the radio may be some sort of contradiction. Think about it. Keep it real for real…you inspired me to come out here and you keep me going…you are the true beautiful people.

Jeremy   
   

 
   
7.1.2004 // Volume 3 - Los Angeles, California
Posted at 2:33 AM

       
       
    
 
You almost forgot all about me didn’t you? Well we can’t let that happen, now can we? Welcome to your official tour of Los Angeles. What a strange place this is. I’ve only really been here two weeks because of my short stint back in PA, but it feels like I feel like an old hand already. I think once can go to the same place more than once and remember how to get there to the point where you are able to then develop new methods of getting there that are quicker and more efficient, you really know a place. This is how I finally feel with Hollywood. The dang place is less than 10 miles from me, but I still cannot figure out how to get there in under 45 minutes, and I’ve tried it all. There are just so many traffic lights and so much traffic and so many pedestrians…I don’t think it’s possible. But anyway, I’ve got lots of exciting news to report. I’ve done a lot and noticed a lot, but I promise this won’t be as long as the last monster report.

When I first got here, school was still in session for all the University of California schools. (There’s a whole bunch of them all over the state, not like Ohio University or something where there’s just one.) UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) of course is one of them, and this is where I am living. I live in this area of town that is all college students even now when school is out, so I really wanted to see the campus. Let me tell you, it is like nothing I’ve seen before. I’ve been to big schools before. Macquarie in Australia was really big; I’ve been to Columbia in NYC and Vanderbilt in Nashville to name a few that I know fairly well, but this place is absolutely ridiculous. The campus is bigger than most of the cities we passed through on the way out here. The buildings were the size of cities themselves. The bookstore was the size of the entire student center at Etown. It was like a Wal-Mart that specializes in UCLA merchandise. They had everything. The buildings were all really cool and old looking too. They weren’t really old, but they looked old. They have a sculpture garden and a botanical garden and a Japanese garden for crying out loud. At Etown we have the Dell. It’s a field of grass. Wooo. Really though, UCLA is enormous. It would take an hour to walk across it probably. Just about every movie you’ve ever seen that features a college campus was filmed there too. There’s such a variety in buildings and it’s so big, the filmmakers can make it look like about anything they want. It’s really cool.

Then I got the first big perk of living in LA. Free movies. I’m not sure how exactly it works, but apparently the movie companies have screenings of the movies before they are released in theaters, I think for the press, but they need to fill the seats so the press can get an accurate gauge of audience reaction. So in front of all the major movie theaters (and there are like 10 in Westwood) are people advertising these movies. You just call in and tell them you’re coming and you can see movies on screen for free. It takes a lot of time because you have to get there really early (they overbook the theater to make sure it’s full), but that’s the only catch. So the first free movie I caught was Two Brothers. It was really good, great cinematography and cute little tigers. I recommend it. The next day, my friend and I went to this cool place I discovered in Pacific Palisades (just south of Malibu) about a half hour away. It was about the only thing that didn’t cost money, and I was strapped for cash at the time. It is called the Lake Shrine, and it’s basically like a path around a beautiful pond designed for meditation and relaxation. It was really nice and peaceful, especially to get away from the hustle and bustle of LA. Some of Gandhi’s ashes are also there in a small shrine. They had cool monuments to all the world religions too. It was a very nice accepting place. On the way home we tried to stop at a state park but found out that even nature costs money in California. It’s totally wack. We have to pay to enjoy land just because the government owns it. One really frustrating thing about driving here is that you can’t turn your steering wheel without turning into somewhere where you have to pay. Malls – pay for parking, restaurants – pay for parking, parks – pay for parking. The city is not designed for people who have no idea where they’re going and need to turn around a lot. Turning around is next to impossible. That didn’t stop me from driving to a cool little thrift store though. This thrift store was special though in that all the clothes are from the wardrobe closet of the movie and TV studios. I always wondered what happened to the wardrobe from movies and TV shows. It turns out they keep it in a mass closet if they think they’ll need it again, and when they run out of space or whatever they sell it to this little thrift store and others like it. It was a really cool place and I picked up a Hawaiian shirt from The Guiding Light soap opera and a pair of special jeans from Warner Brothers. I’m excited about the pants. They are my new official “event” pants. I’ve never had event pants before. It’s like ladies you know you got a little somethin somethin special when you go out somewhere hoppin. You know those neon pink backless braless 3 sizes too small halter tops you wear to go clubbing but would never dream of wearing to class. And even some guys you know bust out the leather pants once in a while. Well I now have a special pair of pants that say, “Holy crap, that guy is either really gay or he’s a total rock star.” It’s all about the attitude you wear them with I think. I’m ready to be a rock star. On the way home I got totally lost but it was cool because I got to drive by all these huge studios that are right there like Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, and some big record company headquarters. Remember the WB water tower in Animaniacs? Yeah, it’s really there. These studios are enormous, just building after building of sound stages and offices and stuff. I also found out on the way home that Bel-Air (home of the Fresh Prince) is not just a section of town, it is actually a huge gated community or so it seems. There is this giant elegant gate labeling the entrance to Bel-Air. I felt like they’d run me outta town if I tried to drive my old minivan in there.

My last night in LA, I went to the UCLA film festival. At Etown we have a video festival for a few hours. Here they go for a few hours every night for a week. I just caught the first night, but the guy who introduced everyone was the writer of Tom Hank’s and Steven Spielberg’s new movie The Terminal. He was a fun guy. The quality of the student films was amazing too. It was light years ahead of what we’ve done at Etown, but hey they had top-notch equipment. Then I flew back to Etown for a week to help with summer orientation. It was great fun and I had a blast meeting lots of new people and learning things about the school and myself that I should have figured out long ago. And one thing that stays with me is that no matter how good these Cali chickies can make themselves look, they still don’t hold a candle to the wonderful women of the greater Pennsylvania area (including but not limited to Ohio, Maryland, and even or possibly especially Jersey). Another great thing I realized about California is that there are very few bugs here. In Etown we left the door open for five minutes and the place was infested with flies. We have our door open all the time here and I haven’t seen 10 flies the entire time. Returning to LA landed me in a heap of trouble though. I lost some important stuff that I later found, discovered the taillight of my van was mysteriously broken, and even went through an incident where my car was stuck in our garage and wouldn’t start. Luckily, we had this mechanic who I think was really a surfer in disguise. He was the coolest guy ever and he fixed me up fine.

Now you may remember good old Melrose Place. Well Melrose Place is an actual street but there’s nothing there but antique shops. A block away is the real inspiration for the show, an ultra-trendy shopping district called Melrose Avenue. (I guess Place sounds sexier.) If I had lots of money I would have spent every penny. I have never seen so many vintage clothing stores in my life. Every other store for like 10 blocks. All ridiculously expensive. Then there were the really chic places. You can tell a place it really really expensive if there is barely anything in the store. There will be a big room with like four pairs of shoes, one on each wall and one employee standing at the door wearing a Gucci suit and pink sunglasses. He’s there not to help you but to remind you that unless you have the same Gucci suit you better not even try to come in because there’s no way you can afford their shoes. The entire underground was here too with tons of tattoo parlors and piercing places and surf stores and all that. It was fun just to walk around and thank God that I didn’t get suckered into buying anything. On the way back I had a moment where I found myself listening to P.O.D.’s song Hollywood right as I was smack dab in the middle of Hollywood. It was interesting as I thought about the words that this is really the most accurate depiction of the place I’ve heard in the millions of songs written about California. Check it out if you’ve never heard it. It’ll rock your socks baby.

I was excited to get a giant cookie in the mail the next day from my family. It was a month early birthday present, but I’m not complaining. We took a trip to Venice that day as well. Venice is famous for its beachfront shops and really eclectic vibe. This is the home of Muscle Beach, the outdoor heavy weights gym, and tons of wacky shops and street performers. There were tons of people there and we got to see little kids dancing around eating fire and a guy playing like 5 instruments at the same time. It was packed out. There are tons of artists selling stuff and murals al over the walls too. Interestingly, there is a really rich area of the town built on canals. When the town was designed it was supposed to be just like it’s namesake in Italy complete with canals instead of streets. Well, they did a lot of the city that way but it didn’t last long, and today there are only a few canals left, but they are really gorgeous and so different from the chaos of the nearby beach.

The next day was a big one as well. I started off going to church for the first time in too long. I checked out the First United Methodist Church of Santa Monica, which according to a book I read for a class last year, is one of the best in the nation. It was a cool place. Really nice area, and the people were really cool. The greeter lady even gave me a hug. It was really nice. Our society hugs way too little. If you see me for the first time in 24 hours or more and there’s not some huggin goin on, something’s wrong. I’m all about it. Deprive our society of meaningful nonsexual physical contact and people grow up afraid of themselves and others. Hugs not drugs baby. It was crazy parking in a parking garage to go to church though, but hey it was about the first time I’ve parked anywhere for free in weeks. I figured while I’m down there, I might as well check out the scene, so I went to this cool pedestrian shopping area called 3rd St. Promenade. It was a hip place. They had these dolphins you could put change in that went to homeless organizations. It’s a good idea I think cause then you don’t feel bad about not giving to panhandlers. And get this…parking was free! I love Santa Monica. Cool cool place. There were a lot of homeless folks there though. It makes sense I suppose for the homeless to hang out in a rich area. These are the people with the most money to spare. Unfortunately they are also the least likely to part with their money. They would much rather spend it on $200 leather purses. With all the parking trouble I have had, I have managed to figure out that it is entirely possible to park for free or at least very cheap if you are willing to walk a little, have the time to search for the right spot, and have a few quarters on you. Otherwise, you’ll shell out the $15 and up parking fees. Ridic man. I also got free passes to another movie playing that night. This one was actually at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. That was really cool, and I knew what to expect this time. The movie was a comedy starring Seth Green and Matthew Lillard. It was called Without A Paddle and it was quite good. Ridiculous, but hey if I wanted to see reality, I’d just live it. As they say, reality is for those who lack imagination.

Then just yesterday I spent the day in Hollywood. I found a cool store called Dudley Do-Right’s Emporium. It is a tiny place that sells just Rocky & Bullwinkle merchandise, and it is going out of business in a few weeks, so I got everything like half off and one lady who works there was Jay Ward’s wife or daughter or something. His studio where he designed everything was right there too and there was a giant statue of the characters right outside. It was a really neat place. (Jay Ward is the creator. Analogy – Jay Ward is to Rocky & Bullwinkle as Matt Groening is to The Simpsons. I didn’t know until a month ago wither, it’s cool.) Then, and this is the coolest thing ever, I got to see my all time favorite actor up close and in person. That’s right, the one and only Leslie Nielsen was a guest on The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn. So maybe this needs dome explaining. Leslie is the old guy from the Airplane and Naked Gun movies famous for his deadpan comedy delivery. He’s hilarious. Craig Kilborn is the talk show host on right after Leno on CBS. He was the chick’s jerk boyfriend in Old School as well if you saw that. The musical guests were MC5 who I’d never heard of either, but they wrote Kick Out the Jams, a great rock song covered by The Presidents of the United States of America and Monster Magnet. Anyway, this thing tapes in Hollywood and anyone can go sit in the studio audience for free. It was an amazing experience. There of course was lots of waiting, but once we finally got in there was this comedian there to warm us up and get us in the mod to laugh. There was so much clapping and cheering and sitting down and standing up I was tired by the end of it but it was so much fun to be right there in the action. Sure the whole thing is totally manipulated and not exactly how it seems coming across the TV set, but it was a blast. The more fun you have as an audience member, the better it sounds on camera, so it’s in their interest to make sure you have a blast. The whole crew was just so much fun. TV really is a cool thing without the commercials. What a great time that was. Leslie Nielsen is like a god. The man is amazing.

And now….I have a job. Yes I am an employee of Ben & Jerry’s Ridiculously Overpriced But Tasty and Socially Conscious Ice Cream. I just filled out the mounds of paperwork today, so I haven’t started yet. Word is that it’s quite the place though. I also had an exciting reunion with some great friends from the land down under and finally ate out somewhere. I had been refusing to eat out until I secured a job as an incentive, but the delicious taquitos I had were worth it. I got laughed at cause I didn’t know what taquitos were. So that you don’t suffer the same misfortune, they are like hard deep fried tacos rolled into a…roll I guess…with some stuff in it. See how complicated Mexican food is? It’s not like American food like a burger you know. It’s a slab of meet between two pieces of bread. Simple. No those crazy Mexicanos have to be complicated…but delicious.

I have a lot planned for the coming weeks. We’ve got the Warped Tour in Vegas, some more TV show tapings, a San Diego trip, some baseball games…maybe some femininas? A las chicas in the Addidas sneakas pleased to meet ya. For real, it’s fun out here. Come visit. So no deep insights today…perhaps the DMX I’m listening to is not the most inspirational music, but hey it’s fun, and Cali’s not about thinking…it’s about living, and I’m about to get bout it bout it. Gitcha gitcha freak on. Peace.

Jeremy   
   


7.21.2004 // Volume 4 - Los Angeles, California
Posted at 2:54 PM

       
       
    
 
I have no pseudo-arrogant boasts about how cool I am or little jokes about how long you’ve been eagerly anticipating the arrival of my next update. Not this time. Frankly it’s hot as mujumbo here in my not air-conditioned apartment and I’ve been outside working all week so I’m tired. Boo hoo, cry you a river. But I have indeed been having a jolly good time as always. Now I don’t want you to think this is all fun and games. California isn’t sunny all the time…well I guess it is…but life even in California isn’t.

One hardship is shopping for food. I don’t know why it’s so hard. I just don’t like it. I see so much good food that I really want to eat, then I realize I don’t have $200 to spend on food, nor do I have the time to or rather want to make the time to make difficult food. I have been enjoying my dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets though. Those of you who still get cooked for enjoy it. Capitalism has produced more choices than you can shake a stick at, and t makes shopping an event. Warehouse stores that sell in bulk are a mixed blessing. Everything is cheaper, but you have to buy more of it than you need. So instead of having variety, I now have about three food choices…but I saved money!

I also went to another TV show taping. It was for “Drew Carey’s Green Screen Show.” Not the best name I agree because most people don’t know what a green screen is. Well, it’s just a wall painted green. So the entire set of the show was just a green wall. Something about that color makes it so that it doesn’t show up in the post-production computers. It was an improv show just like “Who’s Line Is It Anyway?” except when they are done shooting, they will send the clips to animators who will animate everything over their bodies and that’s what will be shown on TV. It’s very unique. It was long though. Four hours of improv is a lot of fake laughing for sure. It was really funny though. Look for it on the WB in September. When I returned from the show late that night there was a birthday party going on in our apartment. Now I’ve been to many a party but I have never hosted one. I technically didn’t host this but it was at my place, and this was an interesting experience walking into my living room and seeing large numbers of bumbling college kids I’d never seen before. I’ll let you host from now on. Be sure to invite me though.

Then I started my job at Ben & Jerry’s. I’m so used to it now, it’s hard to remember it being unfamiliar. I am very lucky to have that job though, because it pays well, is fun, and they let me get by only working a few days a week. It’s a cool gig. It took me a while, but I got the hang of a cash register now. Very intelligent contraptions they are. The best part of working there is that it is cool inside, because it is real hot outside. And the tips are fun. I have always wanted to work at an ice cream shop. Ice cream makes people happy. My job is to make people happy. I like it.

Speaking of heat (seems to be a common theme). Whoever decided to put Las Vegas in the middle of the desert clearly did so during the winter, and whoever decided to route the Warped Tour through Las Vegas in the middle of the summer without any access to air conditioning must have come straight from hell, which by the way is much colder than Vegas. I was glad that I won tickets to the Warped Tour because it’s a great event and I went for a few years and wasn’t able to go last year and didn’t think I could go this year, but then I won these tickets and that was a run-on sentence. Remember my diatribe about driving through the desert before? Well I did it again. And it was almost as hot. Four hours may be a long trip for a concert, but it was worth it. I got to see Vegas on the Fourth of July no less. I’ll report more when I go back, but it really is just a bunch of giant buildings in the middle of the dessert. Cool at night though. And fireworks are legal in Nevada. They actually shut down a street so people could set off fireworks. It was crazy. The whole drive out of the city there were fireworks all around. But anyway, here’s a bunch of random thoughts about the day. On the way there we saw the remnants of an accident. There was a car actually split in two, and it was far away from anything that you would think would be able to split a car in two (i.e. telephone poles, trees, fallen meteors). I have no idea how it happened. I had one of McDonald’s chicken salads for dinner. I didn’t like salads until recently. I figured if I wanted to eat leaves, I’d just go pick them off a tree. But now I like them and McDonald’s has darn god ones. Pretty expensive but good and big too. And they gave me a little machine that you attach to your leg that counts your steps and is supposed to help you loose weight. I think the best way to loose weight is to go to the Warped Tour in the middle of the dessert in the summer. They actually had big fire hoses they got out to just drench people with. It was sooo hot. But I was very proud of myself. I’ve never been to the Warped Tour and spent less than $100, but this year I spent less than half that. I think I am getting tired of punk music, and the whole emo thing was boring before it started. I never thought the day would come when I’d rather listen to John Mayer than New Found Glory but the majority of the punk scene is so contrived. It’s not about the music anymore. There is still some great punk out there, but you really have to look for it. I like pop music. It’s fun and happy. Pop music about girls and relationships that work. Punk is too depressing for my post-Australia optimistic self.

Spider-Man 2 is a movie of epic proportions. Kirsten Dunst is waaay hotter with long hair than she is with her man cut in real life. I also found out that Sara Lee the cheesecake lady also makes shampoo called Radox. All that time you thought the secret ingredient was lots of sugar. I went to a Dodgers game as well. That was cool. They have a really weird stadium. It’s right downtown but it’s in a giant park so on TV it looks like it’s out in the middle of nowhere. And it’s on a big hill so there no way to actually see it or even know it’s there without going directly up to it. And you can’t go form level to level within the stadium like at most ballparks; you just walk around outside to your level and you’re stuck there. It made it seem like a much smaller park than it really was. It had a great view of downtown though. I love baseball stadiums. I love baseball, but stadiums are so cool too. There so many ways you can do the exact same thing. One thing I really liked about Dodger Stadium was that the stadium was about baseball. It wasn’t Insert Bank Name Here Park with tons of ads everywhere and lots of garbage that had nothing to do with baseball. The stadium was for watching baseball, not having business meetings or selling cell phones, but baseball. A game not a business.

I have found that driving around LA with tons of bumper stickers on my car has gotten a few reactions. Some people love it, some hate it. One guy gave me a book on some Eastern religion because he said he liked my stickers. That was on the way back from the La Brea Tar Pits. It was a fun place. As the name implies, it is a series of pits that have trapped animals for thousands of years. They get stuck and can’t get out so they die. They have found literally thousands of wolf skeletons alone…and one human. Then I went to Amoeba Records. Breathtaking. Amoeba is the mother of all music stores. It is the largest independent music store in the country. The place was as big as a Wal-Mart. They even had a stage for bands to play, and it’s right in Hollywood. Cheap used CDs by just about anyone of any genre ever. The next day I went and saw a taping of Balderdash, a new game show based on the board game set to air on PAX in the fall. Based on a board game and PAX should have been enough warning for me. But no I wanted to see the process. It was so cheesy. Bad one line jokes were par for the course. It was fun to see, and they had a really nice set, but I think that is my last taping. I don’t think even the host wanted to be there.

I also got another job. I am still tired from it because it required me to be outside seven hours a day for a week selling overpriced merchandise to rich sports fans. That’s right, it’s the Mercedes-Benz Cup, LA’s only U.S. Open series tennis tournament. It took two days to set up our booth full of Addidas gear on the UCLA campus to get ready for the throngs of people. But they came, and they spent. We sold misters (water spray bottles with a an in front) for $15 and they sold out half way through the week. The heat sold more for us than we could have hoped to do ourselves. It was a good experience though, and it encouraged me to finish my degree because I definitely do not want to work retail for the rest of my life. I can fold shirts with the best of them now. And I learned that tennis fans, despite being very rich, are generally pretty nice. And I got a Mercedes visor out of the deal. I wear it when I drive my Dodge Caravan and people will think I’m just car-sitting or something, like it’s my casual car and I break out the Benz for Friday nights and other special occasions. I also saw a girl who reminded me totally of another girl I know. I’ve been doing that a lot, which brings me to my next thought.

I think I’m going through people I know withdrawal. I am getting a little over-traveled I think. I haven’t been anywhere for more than a few months in the past two years and that makes it hard to establish anything. Maybe my next adventure will be staying in one place for a little bit. I love being out here, and the opportunity to do so much so easily is amazing, but I often have no one to do it with. You can only do so much by yourself. I realize that it is not the place that makes a place great, but the people in that place. Now if I could have all my friends anywhere in the world, I would probably bring you all here. We waste so much time when we’re together I realize. College is the last time in our lives we have the opportunity to see each other so often with such ease and yet we sit in our rooms and watch TV instead of doing stuff. We complain that there is nothing to do in the area so we can’t do anything exciting and have to wander around in drunken stupors looking for the next party. Well here there’s so much to do it’s overwhelming. I’ve got a taste of the real world out here, and it’s full of petty nonsense. The entertainment industry is the only one that has it right, which is why as I must be there. We often think actors miss out on life because they don’t go to normal colleges. Well turns out the whole industry is just an extension of college. Think about this. Once you are an adult, do you have parties? The movie industry is nothing but parties, parties for movie releases, parties after awards shows, birthday parties. Your profession is to meet people and be nice. An actor has no task other than having a good time. It’s to your advantage to make as many friends as you can. Mingling becomes an art. Hollywood never grows up; it stays stuck in college. The whole world already knows my thoughts, so I don't even have to worry about the paparazzi.

This reminds me of a Ben & Jerry’s experience I had. This gorgeous girl walks in with her friend and says her friends are planning a birthday party for her and they’re getting an ice cream cake and she wants to sample some flavors so she knows which she wants in her cake. She went on the Internet and read descriptions and actually made a list of all the ones she thought would be interesting. I figured she was at least in college. Turns out she was turning 18. This is a common trend out here. The entire female population of Los Angeles looks 25. The phenomenon exists more here than anywhere else I know of. Pre-teens look like they’re 25. Middle aged women look 25. Many a time I could not tell which was the mom and which was the daughter. Guys were walking hand in hand with girls that looked like their daughter. It is weird. I can’t wait till I get to 25 though. Apparently this is the prime age for a female. Maybe by then I’ll look like I’m at least 20.

Working at Ben & Jerry’s I have discovered that the majority of people who come in for ice cream are couples. Allow me to get cutesy for a moment. I think that is the cutest thing in the world. There is something so perfect and innocent about two people getting ice cream together. They ask each other what they should get. They sample off the same popsicle stick. They leave me nice tips because they’re so in love money doesn’t matter. Ice cream on a hot day is the quickest way to a girl’s heart. In a world of hot tamales I am a scoop of ice cream. Mint chocolate chip baby.

A few days ago I went to Hollywood. I had been there before and was disappointed to find it was a pretty seedy place. They built a new shopping center to improve the image, but I am sad to say Hollywood is still a dump. At least 90% of the shops are either cheap souvenir stands or lingerie stores. Most of these feature leather and whips. We have this impression that Hollywood is all beautiful white people too. Well Hollywood High School is an actual place in downtown Hollywood, and guess what it’s 75% Hispanic. I looked it up. This is neither good or bad, it simply is far from our normal conceptions. Behind Hollywood I discovered are mountains with one lane two way streets with parked cars all along the side. The Hollywood Hills as they’re called. Do not attempt to drive on these streets unless you know where you’re going. Do not attempt to get to the Hollywood sign. I think it’s just a mirage.

Speaking of driving, I have discovered the most difficult task a human being can attempt. You thought understanding the opposite sex was hard? Try parallel parking on a steep hill. Think about it for a minute. It is impossible and more nerve racking than a middle schooler asking his crush to the dance. You start freaking out cause you’re so sure you’re going to hit someone, and the cars are all Mercedes so you know they have the money to sue you for all your worth and they will because money is more important than a scared Ohio kid who hit the gas instead of the brake. Then you don’t know if you’re in forward or reverse and there’s cars coming from every direction and the street is too narrow to move. Whoa, I’m hyperventilating here folks. Drivers here are hideous creatures. Maybe nice in life but brutal on the road. They have this trick where when they need to get over they will pretend like they’re going to exit then at the last minute pull back into through traffic and people let them over cause they feel bad. You have to understand the average highway speed even with six lanes each way is about 15.

One more trip. I went to Orange County yesterday. The OC as the kids are calling it. This is the California you hear about in songs. LA is the California you see in movies and TV (even The OC show is filmed in LA not OC). LA is a big smoggy city; Orange County is a sunny beach lined with palm trees. Really though it reminded me more of home than anywhere I’ve been. It was just a suburb with lots of palm trees. It was nice though. The highlight was this church called the Crystal Cathedral. It really is like in the old days when churches were built with no expenses spared. It’s a modern cathedral made all of glass. There are huge bell towers and steeples, tons of statues, a garden and everything. Christian or not, this place was awe inspiring. It didn’t have the drab corporate feel of the huge megachurches either. It felt authentic.

So I have two weeks left filled with lots of traveling and about a week to get home probably. Next time you hear from me I will be a man. I don’t feel like a man, and in a few days when I am 21 I don’t think I will either. I feel like a kid. And I hope that never changes. So throw away those inhibitions and run naked through the streets like you did when you were two. Don’t worry about the cops, they’re just jealous they’re too tied down to responsibility to join you. Keep it real. Really really real. For real.

Jeremy   


8.17.2004 // Volume 5 - Los Angeles, California
Posted at 12:24 AM

       
       
    
 
And so it is. Every beginning has an end, and after every end there is a story. This is it; this is the end. No more long email stories for you. I have had quite a time finishing up out west though. I’m sure you’ve all been to a fair before. They are good times. Ferris wheels and funnel cakes are what life is made of. Perhaps you have never been to the Orange County Fair however. It’s like your local county fair except more expensive and really really big. It’s big. So I went to the fair with some good buddies from Australia and had a bang up time. I even got to see famed radio DJ Dr. Demento introduce the most amazing man ever to walk the earth, “Weird Al” Yankovic. Yes, it was very exciting since I’ve seen him on his last few tours and didn’t think it would happen this time. He came to Australia but tickets were really expensive. Here I got to see him at the fair for only the price of admission with some good friends. He may be married now but he continues to dazzle. The man is unstoppable. Then to top it off we rode the ferris wheel. Ferris wheels are a beautiful thing. So cool and relaxing. We even ate some Australian batter dipped potatoes. I believe the potatoes were Idahoian though.

Then I got to go to a wedding. My first really close friend that I’ve known for a long time to tie the knot. It was beautiful. I had to drive up to Oakland for the event though and drove up the coast the whole way. It took forever but was a beautiful drive. Malibu was a nice place. It looks like there’s no houses there cause they are all up on a hill above you or down below on the ocean with so many gates you can’t see the house at all. What good is a beautiful house if no one can see it? Then the weirdest thing happened on the drive up. It started snowing. Then it ended really quick…and I realized it wasn’t snow but a cloud. This isn’t like Ohio fog, oh no, this is a real full blown cloud. I couldn’t see a foot in front of me. This is really tough when you’re going around huge hairpin curves on the side of a mountain. And the clouds never went away really. The central California coast must be the cloudiest place on Earth. They use the word fog down there because it has better connotations, but I’m telling you, they’re just clouds. Now many people really really like this area. They would hang me for saying this, but luckily they are there and I am here, but San Francisco was not a cool place in my opinion. The inland mountain area is cool, but the city not so. I had high hopes for it. It is dirty and crowded and cloudy and dreary and I am still not convinced the Golden Gate Bridge actually exists. You can’t see 10 feet through all the fog. Now I did not see the whole city and the cold weather may have negatively affected me, but it seemed like all of New York squashed onto one tiny mountain. I really liked the wedding though. Weddings are beautiful. It’s nice to know people still get married. I had to drive back late at night though, and that is not fun. Out in the middle of the dessert there are no lights and it’s tough to stay awake. I think I’m immune to falling asleep while driving since I’ve driven so much this trip.

This was also my birthday. I am now an adult. Ironically, I feel more like a child than I ever have. I am more care-free and relaxed after coming back home than I ever remember being when I was in high school. It’s like that movie “13 Going On 30.” I’m a 16 year-old stuck in a 16 year-old’s body who somehow has actually been around for 21 years. That’s a good movie by the way. If you’re a sexy chica we should make a date of it soon. If you’re a macho guy, you oughta shed the act and get over yourself and take your chica to see it. Anyway, I found my way back to a church that Sunday and wound up at a place called Wayfarer’s Chapel. It was absolutely the most beautiful man-made structure I’ve ever seen. It is a part of the Swedenborgian Church, a small denomination based on the teachings of a Swedish philosopher. The place was this all wood and glass room on the side of a hill overlooking the ocean designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son. I cannot describe it in words. You may have seen a marriage there on “The OC.” They have like a wedding a day at this place. It’s always tough to get up for church, but it always energizes me and puts me in a good mood when I go. The area the church was in was really nice. It’s called Palos Altos and is really different from the rest of LA. Realistically LA doesn’t really have one identity. It’s more like hundreds of little communities that happen to be geographically close to one another. This was the nicest part I was in though.

By this time, I was ready for another adventure. Where do Los Angelinos go for vacation? Vegas baby. This was my first real trip to Vegas to enjoy it other than just going to the Warped Tour. It was amazing. I went with my friend’s family and other friends from Australia. They were all amazing and we got to go in an RV and stay at the Mandalay Bay which has a tropical paradise for a swimming pool, and it’s right on the strip. It was so hot though. It’s too hot to go outside at all during the day so you go out at night, but even then it’s in the 90s. It is expensive though. There was a barber shop, but they didn’t do hair on your head, only facial hair. They’d give you a shave for $25 or trim your moustache for $10. What a bargain. Vegas is really like an amusement park for adults. It’s just giant hotel after giant hotel. They all look the same after a while. Giant casino, tons of rooms, a theater, and a pool. You really need to love gambling or have lots of money to make the most of your time there. Neither applied to me, but I had a good time anyway. Don’t take kids though. They have call girl playing cards plastered everywhere.

Some interesting stuff happened at night in Vegas. The was the first time I really got to use my new birthday to my advantage. It was a friend’s 21st so we decided to celebrate. I had a great night, but let me tell you, Coyote Ugly is much crappier in real life than it was in the movie. The one in Vegas isn’t the real one in New York but this place was disgusting. It made me sick to be in there. First, it’s at least 80% guys all crammed into one tiny room. There are two girls who look like morons dancing around on the bar but they’re not bartenders; the bartender was a guy. No one is dancing, just staring at this chick who works there whose job it is to get girls from the audience to come up on stage and dance. So you have sweaty old guys listening to classic rock watching drunk college girls dance on a catwalk. No part of this situation appealed to me, so we were outta there quick. Then we wound up at a place called Ra. It’s in the Luxor or the hotel that looks like a pyramid. (This hotel was really cool cause it wasn’t as flashy as the others. It’s just a big black pyramid and you can’t even tell it exists at night except for this ultra bright beam of light that shoots out form the top.) I hate the fact that guys have to pay a lot of money to get into clubs girls get into for free. All you ladies can quit complaining about inequality. That was probably the last time I pay as much as I did to get into a club, but I regret none of it. I may never have a chance to go to a club in Vegas again on my friend’s 21st birthday. Now you may remember my special pants I talked about earlier in the summer. I finally wore them this night. Bad idea. A dude came up to me and said he liked them and asked if I got them in West Hollywood. West Hollywood is the gay capitol of LA. It was not the reaction the pants were supposed to get, I’ll tell you that. I found out that 21+ clubs are really not my thing though. I have no desire to see washed up 30 year-old women dancing around. Give me an 18+ club any day. On a side note, on the way home we saw the tallest thermometer in the country in a city called Baker. It was 102 degrees out.

That weekend I spent in San Diego. I have little to say because it was an emotional weekend, but the city is really cool. It’s much more clean and pretty and laid back than LA. I could definitely live there before LA, but alas all the industry is up there. We got to watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean to the beats of a Buffet cover band which was really cool, and my friend’s house where we stayed was paradise. Then I came back, worked a few more times, had a party from my awesome roommates, tied up all my loose ends, and we headed back home. It was bittersweet. I was ready to get back to school and friends and all, and the commercialism of the city was wearing on me, but I missed it as soon as I left. There is still a part of me that calls me out there, maybe not to LA, but the West Coast will always be a part of me. It is so alive. With the right attitude and the right people to do it with, that place could entertain me for a hundred lifetimes. They write songs and make movies about California for a reason. Dreams are born and die in California. That place runs the world. It exports it’s own brand of culture around the globe and a part of everybody wants it. I don’t know if I’ll be back, but a part of never left.

Of course we couldn’t just drive back to Ohio; that would be incredibly boring. So we took the scenic route. This involved going back to Oakland and San Francisco. It was cool. Oakland has the best burritos anywhere. We saw the most horrible thing on the way up though. A cow factory. Now I’ve seen plenty of farms in my life, but this was different. Not a few cows roaming the open plains but hundreds and hundreds of cows crammed into tiny pens for miles and miles waiting for death. I almost stopped eating meat it was so sad. I also found out that people from northern California despise southern California with a burning passion. I don’t know if it’s hatred or jealousy or what, but San Franciscans just really really rag on LA like it’s their job. Interesting coming from this seemingly accepting liberal haven. We ate that night in a very unique place: a luxury diner. I thought it was an oxymoron too. It’s really just a fancy restaurant in a rectangular chrome building, but it’s been an old staple of the area. Then we continued on up the Pacific Coast Highway to the north. It’s a really cool road that runs all the way up the California coast through little beach towns. They should make one on the East Coast. We took a little detour then to drive through the Avenue of the Giants, otherwise known as the redwoods. They’re big trees man. Real big. It was like all the movies you’ve ever seen that take place in the woods. The woods out east are creepy but tame compared to the redwood forest. Much more rugged and adventuresome looking. It was really magnificent. We even paid to drive through the middle of a tree. It was totally worth it. The van barely made it, but it was a lot of fun. An interesting thing happened later that evening. We were driving after dark and listening to this jazz radio station and the most interesting song came on. It was called “She Stole My Monkey” and it was a combination of blues and polka with “she stole my monkey” being about the only words in the whole thing. I pray you never have to hear it.

An quirky fact we discovered about the West is that there are more Denny’s out there than McDonald’s. Really every single exit off the highway has a Denny’s, and they’ve gone all upscale now too. They’re still open 24 hours but the $4 breakfasts are now like $6. That’s crap. Then the hard part came. The whole time we had had been driving we were going straight north along the coast but in order to get to Seattle, we had to turn east eventually. This was an emotional time. When we finally turned and left the coast goodbye, not knowing when I would see it again, well it was hard. I didn’t even go to the beach that much, but just the fact that it wouldn’t be there any more that I would live the next year of my life hundreds of miles away from the ocean was a tough realization. I made it through though and drove through Portland, Oregon which despite bad traffic was a cool place. Then we got to Seattle. I’ve always wanted to go to Seattle for a reason I can’t quite put my finger on, and I was not disappointed. They say it rains a lot, but it was gorgeous the day I was there. The city is beautiful and clean and hospitable and friendly. It was a cool place. Nothing remarkable, just very comfortable and relaxed. Being in all these cities has made me think, and I realize that out of everywhere I’ve been in all these cities across the country, I still have not found one that tops Sydney. I find myself comparing everything to the Australian gem and nothing has managed to have the perfect mixture of everything like Sydney does. But don’t get me wrong, the U.S. has some knockouts too.

Leaving Seattle led us into the dessert of eastern Washington. I had no idea Washington had so much dessert but there it was and after it came the gorgeous wooded lake-dotted mountains of northern Idaho. Idaho may get ragged on a lot, but the part we went through was beautiful. It had the most beautiful bluest water I’d ever seen anywhere. Montana was next. It was very big and there were lots of buffalo. I was home on the range baby. We had a little hotel trouble that night. We had to drive late into the night to make our next destination in time, so after driving about 13 hours it’s midnight and we’re ready to retire in the last town in Montana. Unfortunately there are only four hotels in the town all of which are full. I never would have imagined. Never try to find a hotel in the middle of nowhere at midnight without reservations. It was a real bummer and we were real tired. Especially since we were on the edge of an Indian reservation. The next hotels were an hour and a half’s drive away. We got some grub and finally made it where we paid way too much for the first hotel we could find at 2:30 in the morning well into the state of Wyoming. I totally felt like Mary and Joseph. If we hadn’t found that hotel, I was gonna secure us a stable and retire there.

Wyoming was really cool actually though. I kept thinking of the Dixie Chock’s song “Wide Open Spaces” the whole time I was there. The song was probably written about Texas or something, but I can’t imagine anywhere exemplifying it better than Wyoming. It was really cool. So cool I had a burning urge to hear John Denver sing “This Land Is My Land, This Land Is Your Land” and that doesn’t happen very often. Unfortunately we didn’t have it with us, but we did have Peter, Paul, and Mary’s version, and that did the trick. In eastern Wyoming I knew we had left the west for good when we started seeing Hardee’s signs. There are called Carl’s Jr. in the west. Then the bikers came. Turns out the entire midwest was taken over by bikers this week. We had no idea, but we were driving right through the country’s largest biker rally that just happened to be going on in Sturgis, South Dakota as we were driving through. For three days, they were everywhere all around us, and they are really hard to pass on the highway. It was really cool though and probably an aspect of culture I would not have experienced any other way. Also while in South Dakota we had to stop at Mt. Rushmore. It was incredible. Any crap you’ve heard about it is a lie. The place is magnificent. If there is any modern wonder of the world like the ancient ones, Mt. Rushmore is it. They are really big awesome heads. There was actually a plan to make a vault for a hall of records in the mountain behind the heads to hold all this information about why it’s there and the history and contributions of the United States for future generations, but they ran out of money because of WWII. See all the problems war causes? If I had hundreds of thousands of dollars I’d totally fund it. Seriously though, the place was rockin. So we stayed in South Dakota that night and drove to Chicago for our last night on the road. It all ended where it all began, same house and everything. The next day we came back to Ohio and here I am. And the trip is done.

It’s hard for me to think about it being over. This was such a big dream of mine and something I had wanted to do for so long. So much went into this trip, I can’t believe I actually did it. And I’d do it again, and I will do it again. Hopefully you’ll come along with me. Because everyone I talk to says, “Oh that’s so cool that you did that. I would love to do that, but I never could.” And I say, “Sure you can. You just do it.” And they say, “It’s not that simple.” Well I’m here to tell you it is that simple. You want to do something, then do it. Period. Responsibilities? Commitments? The way things work? Rules? That's not the whole story. You can't rely on them. Those things can be very important, don't get me wrong, but there is so much more. The quicker we learn to live our lives instead of watching it on TV and reading about it in magazines and wishing it was ours the quicker we can start enjoying the life we’ve been given. Have fun and make the world a better place by helping others along the way. There you go. It’s not hard; it’s not complicated. It’s not too good to be true. The world is a beautiful place. Truth is goodness so it can’t be too good to be true. Am I immature for saying all this? I’ve never felt so young and full of life as I do now if that means anything. I know I’m alive and enjoying every minute of it. Let yourself be happy. We bring sadness and disappointment on ourselves because we are terrified of happiness. We see messages that tell us we can’t be happy until (fill in the blank). Well here’s some not so subliminal advertising. Be happy now. You don’t have to wait for anything. A new pair of shoes will not make you happy. Covering up your zit will not make you happy. Rockin the cradle of love will not make you happy. Traveling the globe will not make you happy. These things are good things but they are merely attempts to bring ourselves into connection with others. A true meaningful connection with others is the end of our search for happiness. The beauty in the world is out there just waiting to be channeled through a human soul. Let yourself shine. I’m doin my darndest to do the same. This is my last year in college and I have no idea what happens after that, but you can bet your bottom dollar it’s going to be a heck of year. I don’t know if I’ll travel more or if I’ll settle down or what happens after that. All I know is for me every day is the freakin weekend baby…time to have some fun. I hope you’ll do the same and invite me to the party.

Jeremy